32bit ODBC Dialog In Windows 7

Ever wonder how to get the 32bit ODBC dialog box from within Windows 7?

Yea me to…..Well I found it today….Run the command below to get the 32bit ODBC dialog.

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ODBCAD32.EXE

VMWare ESXi 4 increase IDE drive size

I was trying to increase the size of an ide drive I have associated with a VM and the option was greyed out. See image below.

 

I found this option to change the ide device to a scsi on the VMWare knowledgebase.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016192

But the problem is, how do I get a text editor to let me change the vmdk file? Well, that is where you need to access the server from a console or ssh into the box. See website below for more information.

Allowing ssh access to your esxi server.
http://www.techhead.co.uk/vmware-esxi-how-to-enable-ssh-connectivity

Now that we have access to the esxi server via ssh, Below are the steps needed to increase the virtual drive size.

1. find the vmdk you are trying to increase and the “ide” option to lsilogic, per the knowledge base article above.
2. Remove and reload the vmdk in the vSphere Client settings for the particular virtual machine you want to make the adjustment on.
3. Now the drive shows up as an scsi device and you can increase the size of the drive. Now if you are using windows XP, you will probably get the blue screen of death when you try and boot the VM.
4. So go back to the ssh prompt and edit the vmdk file again and change “lsilogic” back to “ide”.
5. Go back into the vSphere Client and remove and reload the drive. Now it reads as an IDE device in the vSphere Client.
6. When you reboot the VM, you will only see the old harddrive size, you need to expand the virtual drive.
7. I use Gparted, go here and download the iso file.
   http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
8. Mount the gparted iso file under the vm and reboot and make sure that the bios for the vm has the boot order set to boot from a cd-rom before a harddrive.
9. After gparted loads, increase the size of the virtual disk and then reboot.
10. Make sure to dismount the gparted iso image.
11. Now you should have a newly expanded IDE virtual drive.

Good luck. Hope all that makes sense.

Windows Uninstall Using the Command Line

I ran across this website while trying to figure out how to uninstall programs from windows computers without using the add/remove program feature in Control Panel.

I like the idea of using the WMIC Windows Management Instrumentation Command. It is clean and relative easy to work with.

I did have a few problems, one of which is that for me it worked best to run wmic as the local or domain administrator.

To be able to run wmic as administrator on a machine, I used psexec from the Microsoft PS Tools and loaded them on a share drive. More about PS Tools can be found here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

I created a quick batch file that I ran.

#output a text file that lists currently installed software
\\server\share\pstools\psexec \\%computername% -u DOMAIN\administrator -p password -i -c -f wmic /output:c:\beforeuninstall.log product get name

#uninstall routine for AutoCad 2010
\\server\share\pstools\psexec \\%computername% -u DOMAIN\administrator -p password -i -c -f wmic product "AutoCAD 2010 - English" call uninstall /nointeractive

Unsure if this works with Windows Vista or Windows 7.